This website contains ideas that are "in process." Simply put, what you read here may be just some random thoughts, rather than validated and final procedures. Mind you, aren't most ideas "in process?" The bulk of what you'll read here are answers to questions I am emailed or asked during presentations, or summaries of excellent ideas others share with me.

Of course, you can add to this blog by leaving your own comments, too.

I have started a new blog, Radical Learners. In order to focus on getting it up and running, I am going to pause my writing on this blog for a short while. You can find the new blog, Radical Learners, at this link. I'm including my first post here, in the hopes that you will be inclined to check out Radical Learners:

Radical Learners:

The people who will save our schools are not the policy makers, or educational researchers, or text book developers, or consultants, or anyone else who works outside of a school. Our schools will be saved by the teachers, principals, superintendents and other educators who live to learn. This new group, people I call radical learners, is emerging in schools all across the world. They are people who are driven by learning, who get up in the morning fired up to try something new, to make a difference, to teach and learn.

Radical learners are everywhere. Often alone, they stand up for kids in board meetings, the principals office, and the staff lounge, but mostly they stand up for kids in their own classrooms. They are creating PLNs, grapping good ideas off of Twitter, writing, reading and sharing good blogs, reading new thinkers like Godin, Gladwell, and Pink, and old thinkers like Friere, Dewey, and Mason. Radical Learners are loving people who will not let schools let kids down. They work the system to make it better, and kinder, more loving, more equitable, more challenging and supportive. They work really hard because they know how much learning matters.

Who are the radical learners?

Radical Learners:

believe we are here on earth to learn, so they are turned on by every chance they get to discover something new

use technology to learn, to teach, or lead (and because it’s cool)

have hope because they know that to teach without hope is to damage, but to teach with hope can save the world

love the members of their PLN

have mentors and coaches

mentor and coach others

are witnesses to the good

are brutally honest about what is really happening in their classroom and would welcome any visitor who could help them improve

don’t blame others but accept personal responsibility

infect everybody with their love of learning, most importantly the children they teach

make a difference

Are you a radical learner?

If you are interested, please check out Radical Learners and let me know what you think.

I could not agree more. I currently just started as teacher assistant in Muskegon, Michigan. I am quickly learning that the ability to teach does not magically appear when one walks into the classroom. I have been thrown into an environment I know nothing about with little to no experience to fall back on. That said, every moment of every day I am learning something. It is exhausting but it is also refreshing to leave the building each day wondering what I could do better, wondering what I could change if/when I am lucky enough to be in front of another class. Additionally, I also feel as though it will be the teachers, principals, etc. who save our schools, not the outsiders who make a poor attempt at looking in.